Chapter Fifteen #2
“And what a shame that was,” a new voice says as one more god arrives. “I always liked Vesuvius. He had this trick he did with severed heads at parties that was truly unexpected.”
This voice is exactly what you would expect from a god appearing under the statue of Treseano, God of Death. Just like the towering statue above him, he carries a mace and a sack. I hope I never know what is in the sack. It squirms in a way that makes me very uncomfortable.
Treseano is middle-aged and short and he walks like he doesn’t want to commit to just one direction.
I get the distinct impression that the other gods shrink away from him.
He leads twenty retainers, all dressed in black cowled cassocks.
All with their mouths sewn shut. His priests.
I hear they do that to themselves, placing each stitch as part of a rite of passage.
Even knowing they chose it, it makes me shudder.
“You too, Treseano?” Markanos asks accusingly. “Since when did we bring armies to this place?”
“Not since the last god war,” Treseano replies. “It looks to me as if this one is kicking off sooner than expected.”
He gestures flippantly at El’Dorian and takes a seat beside Aurelius at the table, scooping up a handful of grapes and eating them one by one as he speaks. His priests remain at the foot of his statue, but he doesn’t set down the wriggling sack he carries.
“No one is at war,” Pagetto says urgently, taking the seat opposite him with a very straight spine.
I can see even from here that she doesn’t like to sit at the table with a reminder splayed out across it that even gods die, but she does.
She must hold a weak position among them if she must pretend at equanimity when she clearly does not feel it.
Glorian and Markanos don’t have to pretend. They stand by their statues as if they each have one foot out the door.
Three more are left. Ordanus, God of Music and Art; Alexandros of the Hammer, God of Smiths; and Okeanos, God of the Sea.
My palms are sweating. Just a little while longer and he will be here.
“Are you really going to eat?” Glorian asks them, her mouth twisting. “With poor El’Dorian laid out like that and both Markanos and Alexandros posturing as if they mean to make war, do you really plan to sit and feast together?”
“I’m not posturing,” a bold male voice says, and a tall, golden-haired man steps out from the foot of the statue of Alexandros.
His chlamys is black and clasped at the shoulder with a complicated silver fibula pin.
A hammer is slung across his back. “War is coming. My smiths feel it in the pounding of their hammers, and you all know well that we cannot take part in the wars of man directly. To fail to prepare our worshippers to face what is coming is to be blind and deaf to the pleas of their hearts.”
“Well said,” says Aurelius, toasting him.
“Where’s Ordanus?” Alexandros asks—he’s as muscled as you’d expect from a god of blacksmiths and silverworkers—pulling out a chair and offering a goblet to Pagetto, who receives it very reluctantly. He takes a place beside her, leaving only three standing.
“I think we’ve lost the important thread in all these greetings,” Markanos growls. “What matters is not whose followers threaten who or what wars might arise—all that will come in time.”
“If you have anything to do with it,” Alexandros mutters, and Aurelius lifts his glass to toast him again.
“What matters,” Markanos says, speaking over them, “is who killed El’Dorian.”
“Most likely it’s some mortal who wanted her place,” Glorian says eventually, and she seems to steel herself before finally taking a place at the foot of the table. It’s as far from the corpse as it is possible to be, but even so she grimaces.
“Heavens forfend.” The second-to-last god has arrived and he stares in horror at El’Dorian as he strides from the base of his statue.
Ordanus, God of Music and Art, doesn’t carry the harp he’s depicted with, but the two harpists following him make up for it.
One is male and one is female and they are both young and lovely, dressed in blue-trimmed robes, playing as they follow him.
Ordanus is worshipped along the coast wherever Okeanos is not. I’ve been in dozens of his temples and heard his priests and priestesses play at coronations and ceremonies all my life. To see him in the flesh fills me with awe.
Ordanus’s harpists sway to the music, their gazes fixed into the distance. I am starting to see that the servants of the gods are kept intentionally at a distance. They are mute in this assembly, no more noted than furniture.
I remember visiting a temple of Ordanus on the Ivory Shore that had a choir of a hundred souls, and their song was so divine that I would not leave until they’d sung their entire selection. Every song was in praise of this deity, and it feels like a rope burn to think this is how little he cares.
It’s only when I hear someone say, “But it rather showed your hand to attack the Crocus Isles outright, don’t you think?” that my attention is suddenly riveted in place.
What have I missed? Who attacked our islands?
I try to peek around the statue again, but I have moved too quickly.
Across the room, Markanos freezes and then grunts, and with a decisive leap, he bursts forward, crosses to the table in two strides, vaults over it, and is in front of me before I have unfrozen enough to flee.
He reaches down, seizes me by the hair, and drags me to my feet.
“Little murderess,” he says with a curling lip. “Good evening. I am Markanos, soon to be your executioner as I take revenge for El’Dorian.”
“I didn’t kill anyone,” I say in a rush, but he’s already slid his sword from its scabbard and he has the edge pressed to my throat.
“How long have you been hiding, listening to us?” His voice is low and threatening.
I say nothing. No answer to that question will please him.
“We could hold a court,” Glorian says from her seat at the table. She is watching us tensely. “After you check to be sure there aren’t more mortals crawling around here. If one slipped in, who knows how many others might have entered our plane?”
“Why complicate things?” Markanos says easily, turning his sword in a casual but showy trick that spins it around his palm and back into his grip.
I can imagine him doing that with my blood still dripping from it.
“She is here where none but the blood of a god can enter unless they are brought in our entourages. She is the one who killed El’Dorian, however she managed such a task.
Where are you hiding your god weapon, mortal woman? ”
He drags me forward, out in front of the statue of Okeanos.
It looms over me, a great, shirtless figure holding a fishing spear in one hand and a string of pearls in the other.
I nearly laugh at the irony of it; I may very well be slain for a crime I didn’t commit…
yet. For while I have not killed a god, I certainly came here to do just that.
The dark humor of it twists my lips into a smile, and when Markanos’s eyes meet mine, it seems my smile is the wrong expression to be wearing.
He grits his teeth and draws his sword back.
I’m just inhaling my last breath when a sudden hand yanks me backward by the chiton and another catches Markanos’s arm, as the blow he’s been threatening finally comes down.
I gasp as I stumble backward and crash into a solid body built like a wall. I am pulled all at once against the chest of a god. I can tell that’s what he is. His power weakens my knees. And I know this touch, this scent.
“Okeanos,” Markanos says, sounding surprised and a bit disappointed. “You’re late. And you’re interfering. I was about to dispatch this mortal.”
My mouth is dry—and not just because I was almost murdered a moment ago. My husband is here at last. He knows I want revenge. Will he understand that I came here to find the opportunity for it?
The rhythm of my heart is erratic.
“In that case, I am late,” Okeanos says, and my breath gusts out in sorrow. “I nearly missed saving you from a dreadful mistake, my friend.”
The word “mistake” sounds louder than all the others, and with it I finally steel myself and force myself to turn.
His iron grip slackens enough to let me look at him, and as I turn, our gazes meet.
“You came,” he mouths to me. He knows. And the way he looks into my eyes is vulnerable and intimate and it makes my lips part and my stomach flip over.
He swallows, and when he makes his announcement, his voice is strained. “This is my wife.”